Leanspace is delighted to announce that it has won the France 2030 “UMBRELLA” Project, valued at €10.5 million, along with partners CySec and Constellation Technologies & Operations (CTO).
It is a significant investment, backed by the French government, which positions Leanspace as the critical infrastructure to manage large-scale, dynamic, and highly secure satellite constellations – boosting France’s role as a major supplier of space technology.
The “Umbrella” project aims to address the growing complexity of small satellites, a clear trend of the post-Newspace era that will be fueling the growth of the space industry.
A significant leap forward
This project represents a significant leap forward for Leanspace, which has grown from a humble startup to a global competitor in the space industry.
With this €10.5 million project, Leanspace demonstrates its capability to take on large-scale, government-backed initiatives, positioning itself alongside established industry giants in the space technology sector.
Already flight-proven for small satellite missions, through these new offerings Leanspace has entered the exclusive league of high-end, mission operations software suppliers, competing head-to-head with the few providers that can address the unique requirements of complex space systems.
In Europe, governments and enterprises will now have a new sovereign offering to operate their future satellite missions, without needing to depend on non-EU suppliers for modern and cloud-native systems.
New US Office
In the USA, following commercial successes with our US customers and the recent release of an ITAR-compliant offering, Leanspace has announced plans to establish its US office later this year, bringing its technologies to address complex missions to the American market.
This expansion into the US market underscores Leanspace’s growing global presence and its readiness to serve complex missions for both commercial and governmental clients on an international scale.
Why the Umbrella project is important for the future of constellation operations
One of the most difficult challenges for space in this decade is how the industry can cope with the growing number of constellations and diverse assets inside of them. It is quite a significant issue with current forecasts for constellation sizes ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands by the year 2030.
As they grow in both size and complexity, so does the challenge of managing their various orbits, satellite platforms, communication protocols, and software configurations. This is especially true for inter-satellite communication networks, which require thousands of precise movements to maintain a stable connection.
The other major component of this challenge is data. For broadband networks and high-revisit Earth Observation missions, there is a tremendous amount of data that needs a significant level of security to manage the heightened cybersecurity risks.
How Leanspace and its partners are answering these new needs
To meet this significant challenge, operators need new ways to maintain all of their assets in permanent synchronization, handling an overwhelming amount of events, dependencies, and interactions that are hard to plan for and must be treated in real-time.
“Leanspace’s unique software infrastructure is a key enabling technology to fuel the future of the space industry. With several high-profile customers relying on it to fly satellites in orbit, we have proven in barely 4 years our technical and commercial readiness. I am proud of our success and our team’s innovative spirit. This France 2030 funding will propel us to new heights, reinforcing our technology to address highly complex, large-budget satellite programs. I am grateful to the French government for its unwavering support in making Leanspace a global spacetech leader.”
— Guillaume Tanier, CEO & Co-founder at Leanspace
To answer these new needs, Leanspace, and its partners CySec and CTO will develop and bring to market new offerings:
- Universal Monitoring: A common infrastructure to collect Gbps (gigabytes per second) of data and monitor thousands of satellites and ground assets, regardless of orbit, platform, protocol, or configuration.
- Dynamic Reconfiguration: A ‘constellation as code’ paradigm that ensures conference and easy reconfiguration of large dynamic systems, through managing and distributing configuration changes to operational satellites.
- Orchestration & Automation: Plan and timely automate routine satellite operations across the diversity of assets, considering constraints like CONOPS, orbital elements, satellite states, available resources, and ground station visibilities.
- Post Quantum Security: Confidential computing on public clouds with CySec’s ARCA OS, and new post-quantum cryptography algorithms for ground-to-satellite communication.
“UMBRELLA will allow CYSEC to integrate into the Leanspace platform multiple cybersecurity features required to protect mega-constellations against future threats, such as post-quantum cryptography embedded in a Public Key Infrastructure combined with advanced threat detection mechanisms.”
— Mathieu Bailly, VP at CYSEC
- Digital Twin: A high-fidelity simulation environment built for CTO’s future constellation that will be used to validate the Leanspace platform for complex satellite operations, and made available to customers in an “as a service” model.
“The Digital Twin represents a key asset to structure the technical collaboration between Leanspace, Cysec, and CTO, to validate the interfaces, the operational and security concept required to deliver the universal high speed / low latency internet connectivity service CTO aims at offering to our worldwide customers.“
— Hugues Favin-Leveque, Chief Technical Officer at CTO
The UMBRELLA project not only showcases Leanspace’s technological prowess but also highlights its ability to lead collaborative efforts with partners like CySec and CTO, tackling the most pressing challenges in modern space operations
Conclusion
As we move forward, we invite you to join us on this journey to support the growth of constellations. If you’re curious to learn more, organize a meeting with our team by clicking the button below: